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Comment by throwawayarnty | Hacker News Reader

His example of a T-shaped person doing T-shaped work is:

>Setting up a suitable build system. Writing some unit tests for the code. Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed. Designing nice mock-ups or logos. Creating animations or graphics for presentations.

This makes me think the author is a fairly I-shaped person, because those examples look like one area (i.e., build systems, unit tests, sketching models).

An example of a T-shaped person would be someone who can develop wet-lab experimental technique as well as new machine learning models (which in academia you have the space to do).

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Author here---I was thinking about actual design work or working on the 'presentation' aspects of a publication. For me, the development of new experimental techniques and new ML models is more or less the same. Could you elaborate?

(but you are spot on: the breadth of my skills depends on your Zoom level...I am only a lowercase t at best :D)

Nice to hear from you!

I guess for me it is assumed that one who does the work can also communicate the work in various forms (text, formal presentations, informal discussions). Perhaps it requires separate skills? But to me they sound like a continuation along the same "I".

When one hears a nice talk from (what I would call) an "I" researcher, it is usually communicated well, but the techniques and scientific question can be narrow.

When I hear a nice talk from a "T" researcher, it's usually someone who combines seemingly disparate fields (e.g. physics + sociology) together to solve a scientific question.

I guess either way I assume "I" and "T" researchers are both able to communicate their work. Perhaps that's where I misunderstood your post.

Doing wet-lab experiments and developing in-silico ML models are completely different and often times labs are often focused on only one or the other. I imagine a T-shaped person excels in wet-lab experiments to generate quality data as well as in analysis/modeling skills to put the data into a quantitative framework.

I also want to make it clear that I don't consider "I" or "T" any better than the others. We need both in science to progress. Perhaps our definitions of "I" and "T" differ slightly.

Ah, I think I see the distinction now! :-)

I was thinking more in terms of skills that translate between different projects, such as the large degree of software engineering skills that help in every ML project. I realise that this is a relatively narrow definition of 'T,' and yours is much, much larger.

Science is definitely benefiting from all types of researchers; I was just observing that some hiring committees ignore non-core aspects of research in CVs, focusing only on the publication output.

> I imagine a T-shaped person excels in wet-lab experiments to generate quality data as well as in analysis/modeling skills to put the data into a quantitative framework.

Couldn't agree more! And often, at least in my observation, it's better to have someone who is a 'jack of some trades' here...

> I also want to make it clear that I don't consider "I" or "T" any better than the others. We need both in science to progress. Perhaps our definitions of "I" and "T" differ slightly.

Absolutely :-) And thanks for pointing out these differences in definition! Goes to show that I am living in my own little bubble...

Thanks for your article and responses.

I was thinking about famous "I" and "T" scientists in history and I think there is a connection between "T" and "I" scientists and Freeman Dyson's "Birds and Frogs" essay.

Examples of Frogs or "I": Francis Bacon, Freeman Dyson, John von Neumann

Examples of Birds of "T": Descartes, Yuri Manin, Hilbert

Yes, that's an excellent metaphor! Maybe this would be more apt than 'I' and 'T'.

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